Monday, March 7, 2011

Here are some thoughts from Oriole slugger Luke Scott about a myriad of topics -- his workouts, the changes to the roster, new additions, moving to the outfield and more.

Hope you enjoy and a special thanks to Franklin Sports and Kevin McCarthy from Cirillo World PR for providing the blog with the quotes and the Q&A.

Favorite Stadium to Hit In: My favorite is Arizona. It's great. The ball flies, it's got a fast infield. The best hitters I have ever seen at any level see the ball tremendous there. It's very conducive for hitting. It's a big field, it's large, but the good thing with the ball carrying is that the bloopers fall in and with the fast surface you'll get your ground ball hits. If you do get ahold of it, there won't be a lot of traffic. That light air, the ball cuts right through it and doesn't want to come down. That's my favorite place to hit by far.

Toughest Pitcher: There's a few. Just go up and down the American League East. The tough lefties are usually the most difficult. Sabathia and Jon Lester are two that stand out. The guys both have power arms; they run mid-90s plus. They have tremendous breaking stuff. Good sliders, good curveballs. What makes them so difficult is that they are power arms that can finesse you. They can finesse you in a hitters count and drop some breaking balls in. They don't hang too much stuff. They don't give you too much to hit.

On His Conditioning Program: I do all the weights and the plyometric training, but I've incorporated cutting wood with an axe. I left completely behind me hitting off a tee and taking batting practice during the offseason. The reason why is I come to Spring Training and I have to fix everything, so I don't pick up a bat until a week before Spring Training.

I like to get out in the cold weather when I train out in Oklahoma. I cut the tree down, then once it's down on the ground I piece up the whole thing with an axe. Trunk, branches, everything. The end result is it builds tremendous forearm and grip strength. It also teaches the basic swing, you can't do anything wrong. If your hands cast out or you do something that wouldn't be good as far as mechanics go with your swing, the axe will usually bounce off the tree and it'll laugh at you. But if everything is right, sound and your mechanics are good, when you hit the tree the right way it'll cut through it right away like nothing. It's worked for me.